The left-handed hitting Kepley could help the Tar Heels replace their stud outfielders taken in the MLB Draft.
Adam Smith
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — North Carolina picked up a pair of baseball transfers from Liberty on Wednesday, with the new additions including the Flames' top hitter, and also providing the latest evidence of former Liberty coach Scott Jackson's reported return to the Tar Heels.
Lefty-swinging outfielder Kane Kepley, who hit .332 while earning second-team All-Conference USA honors this past season, and right-handed pitcher Cale Bolton announced their transfer commitments to UNC with posts on social media.
Kepley is listed at 5-foot-8 and 165 pounds, and spent two seasons at Liberty. He figures to become one of the outfield candidates in the mix next season, as UNC coach Scott Forbes and Co. are tasked with restocking those positions from the team that reached the College World Series. The Tar Heels had star center fielder Vance Honeycutt (first-round pick by the Baltimore Orioles), pure-hitting left fielder Casey Cook (third-round pick by the Texas Rangers) and productive right fielder Anthony Donofrio (10th-round pick by the Seattle Mariners) taken in the 2024 MLB Draft across the last three days.
Kepley is playing for in the Hyannis Harbor Hawks in the prestigious Cape Cod Baseball League this summer. He started all 58 games and led Liberty in batting average, hits (71), runs (57), total bases (112), walks (53) and stolen bases (25 in 27 attempts), to go along with nine home runs and 31 RBI this past season, as the Flames went 24-34 overall and tied for fifth place in the Conference USA league standings.
He's from Salisbury, N.C., the same hometown as Honeycutt, and starred for South Rowan High School's state championship baseball team in 2022. Kepley's 33 stolen bases that season rank No. 11 in the North Carolina high school baseball history.
Bolton was a junior at Liberty this past season, after transferring from Brunswick Community College. He's from Louisburg, N.C., and is listed at 6-5 and 230 pounds. He made 16 appearances this past season, with all but one of them coming out of the Liberty bullpen, and went 2-2 with a 5.08 ERA. Opposing batters hit a healthy .289 off Bolton, who logged 28⅓ innings on the 2024 season.
UNC (48-16) delivered the program's highest victory total in seven years this past season and claimed the ACC's regular-season title, along the way to engineering a return to the College World Series for the first time since 2018. It marked Carolina's 12th all-time appearance in the CWS and eighth visit to Omaha, Neb., since 2006 to compete in college baseball's main event.
Kepley and Bolton join the Tar Heels' incoming transfer class that includes first baseman Samuel Angelo (from Division III Montclair State), outfielder Tyson Bass (from Division III NC Wesleyan), lefty pitcher Tom Chmielewski (from Princeton), catcher / corner infielder Rom Kellis (from Florence-Darlington Tech junior college), and lefty pitcher Dylan Weber (from Division III Christopher Newport).
On Tuesday, left-handed hitting Sawyer Black of High Point (N.C.) Wesleyan Christian Academy, the top-ranked high school outfielder in the state, committed to UNC. Black had been a Liberty recruit, but changed course when Jackson resigned from his coaching post there last week. Kepley and Bolton were among the Liberty players who entered the NCAA transfer portal upon Jackson's resignation.
Jackson served as an assistant coach under former UNC head man Mike Fox across eight seasons from 2009-16, and worked alongside Forbes in that capacity. Jackson was on the Carolina staff when the Tar Heels went to the CWS three times (2009, 2011, 2013) during a stretch of five seasons. After leaving for Liberty, he became the first coach to take the Flames to three NCAA Tournament appearances (2019, 2021, 2022).
Jackson resigned July 11. He told the Lynchburg (Va.) News & Advance that he'll be returning to UNC join Forbes' staff in an assistant-coaching role, calling the move "probably the hardest decision of my life." He used "my best friends in baseball" to describe his relationship with Forbes and UNC assistant coach Bryant Gaines.
"And so I get to do it with them every day and take care of my family, and that really made a lot of sense," Jackson told the News & Advance.
His Liberty teams went a combined 246-181, winning 57.6 percent of their games during his eight seasons at the helm. The Flames compiled a school-record 43 victories and won the Atlantic Sun Conference title in 2019. After back-to-back trips to the NCAA Tournament in 2021 and 2022, Liberty finished 29-31 in 2023, the program's final season in the Atlantic Sun, before moving to Conference USA.
